Past Programs
Books - Non Fiction - 2006
Michael Frayn: The Human Touch
26/11/2006
Michael Frayn is a novelist and a playwright who has always presented widely varying kinds of work. Did you ever see his farce Noises Off? A very funny slapstick, and different from his two most recent plays, Copenhagen, about a meeting between two of the founders of quantum mechanics, and Democracy, about the East German spy who worked for Willy Brandt. In the 1960s his first two novels won major prizes, and his latest one, Spies, won him the Whitbread novel award in 2002.
Now I hope you don't take this the wrong way but, in a way, reading his new book is like being cornered at a party by a guy who has been smoking dope and is feeling very profound, and one idea leads to another in a very short space of time. Because in The Human Touch, Michael Frayn returns to his roots in philosophy (that's what he studied as a lad), this time in a non-fiction exploration of questions that have underscored most of his fictional work – the relationship between existence and human consciousness. It's a book which takes at its core philosophy – what can we know? What is real? What do we mean by the self – and would the universe exist if there weren't people here to observe it and measure it and worry about it? He even says 'reality is the child of man's imagination'.
Michael Frayn spoke to me late last week from our studio in London, and I told him then that this book is a surprise and a bit of a mystery for people who are used to reading his comic novels and seeing his plays. So why did he write this book now?
Michael Frayn: The Human Touch
20/11/2006
Michael Frayn is a novelist and a playwright who has always presented widely varying kinds of work. Did you ever see his farce Noises Off? A very funny slapstick, and different from his two most recent plays, Copenhagen, about a meeting between two of the founders of quantum mechanics, and Democracy, about the East German spy who worked for Willy Brandt. In the 1960s his first two novels won major prizes, and his latest one, Spies, won him the Whitbread novel award in 2002.
Now I hope you don't take this the wrong way but, in a way, reading his new book is like being cornered at a party by a guy who has been smoking dope and is feeling very profound, and one idea leads to another in a very short space of time. Because in The Human Touch, Michael Frayn returns to his roots in philosophy (that's what he studied as a lad), this time in a non-fiction exploration of questions that have underscored most of his fictional work – the relationship between existence and human consciousness. It's a book which takes at its core philosophy – what can we know? What is real? What do we mean by the self – and would the universe exist if there weren't people here to observe it and measure it and worry about it? He even says 'reality is the child of man's imagination'.
Michael Frayn spoke to me late last week from our studio in London, and I told him then that this book is a surprise and a bit of a mystery for people who are used to reading his comic novels and seeing his plays. So why did he write this book now?
Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose and The Road To Reality (transcript available) Read Transcript
26/09/2006
In the second of our major feature interviews from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we bring you one of the major thinkers in the world of science, Sir Roger Penrose.
Norwegian star writer Asne Seierstad on the legacy of the Balkan war
17/09/2006
Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian writer and newspaper and television journalist who was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
You may already know her as the author of her bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul. In that book she related her experiences in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime. She met a bookseller there and asked to write about his family. She moved into his flat for three months to collect material from the 12 family members who lived there. Her portrait of the family patriarch was not flattering, and he threatened to sue her following the publication of the book.
She has also written of her time in Iraq in A Hundred and One Days: A Bagdad Journal. But in the interview you are about to hear, recorded last month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're talking about another book, set in a complex political and moral landscape. It's called With Their Backs To The World: Portrait From Serbia. The book itself has an interesting history. It is an updated version of her first book, and it's fascinating, not only because it's a forensic portrait of a cross-section of Serbian characters (and I say characters because she has the novelist's touch for description and story), but also because she visits these people again and again, and that's unusual, for a correspondent like Åsne Seierstad, to maintain relationships long after the journalistic caravan has moved on, as it were.
Norwegian star writer Asne Seierstad on the legacy of the Balkan war
11/09/2006
Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian writer and newspaper and television journalist who was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
You may already know her as the author of her bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul. In that book she related her experiences in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime. She met a bookseller there and asked to write about his family. She moved into his flat for three months to collect material from the 12 family members who lived there. Her portrait of the family patriarch was not flattering, and he threatened to sue her following the publication of the book.
She has also written of her time in Iraq in A Hundred and One Days: A Bagdad Journal. But in the interview you are about to hear, recorded last month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're talking about another book, set in a complex political and moral landscape. It's called With Their Backs To The World: Portrait From Serbia. The book itself has an interesting history. It is an updated version of her first book, and it's fascinating, not only because it's a forensic portrait of a cross-section of Serbian characters (and I say characters because she has the novelist's touch for description and story), but also because she visits these people again and again, and that's unusual, for a correspondent like Åsne Seierstad, to maintain relationships long after the journalistic caravan has moved on, as it were.
Malcolm Fraser launches Reflected Light (transcript available) Read Transcript
13/08/2006
This collection of reflections, evocations, commentary, criticism and humour called Reflected Light, was launched by one of our great public speakers, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, in Melbourne last month.
Malcolm Fraser launches Reflected Light (transcript available) Read Transcript
08/08/2006
This collection of reflections, evocations, commentary, criticism and humour, called Reflected Light, was launched by one of our great public speakers, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, in Melbourne last month.
The history of reportage (transcript available) Read Transcript
07/05/2006
It is one of ironies of conflict, that while a country might win a war of weapons abroad, it could just as easily lose the war of words at home. The flow of information in times of national stress can become heavily contested and contentious, with the machinery of propaganda attempting to undermine, intimidate or block the engines of independent journalism.
So at a time when these issues are close to the minds of both government and the media, what can we learn from the past? Do we understand the role of the journalist? Is the idea of independence in the media over-rated or under-valued? And could we lose our access to voices of truth, simply through carelessness?
To discuss these crucial issues, Ramona Koval has invited a couple of experts on these topics ... Oxford Professor of English John Carey, who is editor of The Faber Book of Reportage, and Martin Flanagan, who is a writer and journalist of many years.
And Radio National's Tony Barrell speaks to UK writer and BBC documentary-maker Nicholas Rankin about the life of journalist GL Steer. George Steer was the person who alerted the world to the bombing of Guernica by the Germans at the end of the Spanish Civil War, and Nicholas Rankin's book, Telegram from Guernica: The Extraordinary Life Of George Steer, War Correspondent, tells us much about the pressures and obstacles that journalists have always faced when trying to report the truth.
Michael Hofmann on Joseph Roth
04/05/2006
We visit the Berlin of the 1920s and 30s, seen through the eyes of author and journalist Joseph Roth and revived for us in sparkling form by his translator, the poet, writer and critic Michael Hofmann.
Joseph Roth was born in 1894 and, after serving in the First World War, he started writing for newspapers in Vienna and later in Berlin. When he was appointed Paris Correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, he was one of the best-paid journalists in Germany. His greatest novel is agreed to be The Radetzky March. Nine of Roth's books have been translated into English and there are more on the way.
Ramona Koval talks to Michael Hofmann about the enduring impact of Joseph Roth's writing and about his own role in the establishment of these works as classics.
That's this week on Books & Writing, with Ramona Koval at 7.25 Sunday evening and repeated at 1.05 on Wednesday afternoon ... on Radio National.
